


Within You

by Turnandfacethepaige



Series: Labyrinth Au [2]
Category: Doctor Strange (2016)
Genre: M/M, So it turns out that this isn't the Labyrinth AU nobody wanted, and that quite a few people wanted a sequel!, so here it is!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-12
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 03:30:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10890789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turnandfacethepaige/pseuds/Turnandfacethepaige
Summary: He was running. He had to run again.





	Within You

He was running.

He couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on anything else but Christine, Christine, Christine. She was here, hiding somewhere in this labyrinthine mess of staircases and doorways that would give Escher a migraine. He had to find her. 

He had to run again.

Stephen had gotten to the castle, Wong, the Ancient One and Kaecilius running alongside him as they dodged goblin arrows and swords, flinging themselves through the front door. He had to go on alone, go and get Mordo alone. Stand up to him, tell him to back off. Show the Goblin King he wasn’t afraid anymore. He’d gotten up the first flight of steps, tore through the corridors until he reached the door, flung it open -

And all remaining hell had broken loose.

He couldn’t actually understand what it was he was looking at at first. It was a mess of sandy stone and sharp ledges and hollows broken into the walls doused in the soft light of torches, unbroken by any outside light, even though a lilac dusk had begun to fall outside the castle.

A few seconds had passed, and then it hit him. Doorways. Stairs. Leading to nowhere, to no place. No sight of any way out, no sight of any other person standing there. Stephen had turned back, ready to go back into the corridor and search the castle for other rooms, but the door behind him had vanished without a sound and without him hearing. All that loomed behind him was the mirror of what lay before him; a twisting madness of stairs and doorways. And no way out.

So he had to run again. 

He ran down the stairs, carefully rounding the doorways and corners, ears pricked for the soft tread of leather boots or the huff of breath echoing around the place. But there was none. Only the blood pounding in his ears, the slap of his shoes against the stone, the graze of his fingers against the stone.

Rounding a corner, he saw only a long, straight ledge, with a gigantic drop to the side that promised only more stairs and more doorways. He went forward, hoping that something would be there, waiting for him at the end, and as he did so, ever curious, he glanced over the edge.

Staring up at him from below the ledge was Mordo.

Stephen leapt back, gasping in shock at the sight of Mordo’s glittering eyes, pulsating with something Stephen couldn’t recognise just inches away below his feet.

And then, just when he thought things couldn’t get any weirder, couldn’t get any stranger, and couldn’t get any damn creepier; Mordo’s voice, rich and smooth began to float up from below him.

‘How you turn my world, you precious thing….’

He was singing. He was fucking singing.

This day was just fan-fucking-tastic.

But then Stephen realised that Mordo had stopped, the notes echoing around the high chamber. Cautiously, he peered over the side. Mordo had gone.

A sharp click of heels against stone, and then the voice came again, to the right, from what sounded at least a metre above his head.

‘You starve and near-exhaust me.’

He whipped to look above him. Mordo stood, horizontal, silhouetted dark in the light doorway, cocked head, hips slightly jutted. He’d changed since the ballroom - wearing what appeared to be black leggings that slunk around his legs, a silky black waistcoat with large, golden buttons, and a black shirt, wide sleeved and high-necked, billowing with hidden promise around him. His hair still remained up, just as it had been when it had flowed around his coat in the ballroom, and fluttered in smooth waves around him, lit up like an ebony halo in the light that surrounded him. 

He wasn’t smiling. 

Stephen glared at him, although the tiniest sliver felt pleased with himself. Mordo had smiled at him his entire journey through the labyrinth, grinning like a leopard, purring like a cat; a smile had been his measurement for how far along he was getting in Mordo’s game. And now the cat was upset, because a teenage boy had managed to get far enough in his stupid little game for him to start getting worried. Damn right, Stephen thought proudly. He’d gotten to him now. There was nothing Mordo could do to make him turn back now. 

He was beating the Goblin King at his own game.

But then the voice came again - behind him - 

‘Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you.’

He whipped around to see Mordo step out from the dark, head turned slightly, boots clicking on the stone, stalking towards him - getting closer, getting closer, and Stephen took a step back, braced himself against the wall, steeling himself for the moment when Mordo would strike him, hit him, attack him -

Mordo took another step, and then another, and then he was walking through him. It was so quick Stephen couldn’t register what was happening. A soft brush, like a liquid wind pouring across him, a smell of something sweet and creamy, a crackle of static, and then Mordo was gone, walking behind him. Stephen looked down at himself, expecting to see crimson staining his jeans, his white shirt, something left behind by Mordo, but saw nothing. Nothing at all.

Mordo hadn’t done anything to him.

Very slowly, he turned around.

Mordo stood at the edge of the ledge, facing him, and the minute Stephen locked eyes with him, his face changed almost instantly, a heartbreaking kind of brokenness spreading across his features, devastating in how exhausted and trodden down he looked. He raised a hand and sang.

‘I move the stars for no-one.’

And then, as if he couldn’t make things anymore confusing, he stepped over the ledge, vanishing beneath the stone.

Stephen’s mind blanked as he struggled to comprehend just what exactly was happening. Move the stars for no-one? Move the stars? What the hell was he on about? And why the hell would he look that sad, singing that to him? 

Why did Mordo look like he cared?

Stephen hesitated, waiting a bit, almost wanting to see if Mordo would come up again to explain what was going on. But he didn’t.

So Stephen started to run.

He did a 180 and ran up the nearest set of stairs, dashing across a ledge, jumping over a staircase, hounding round the corner. He started up the nearest set of stairs, and as he did, below him, mimicking his own steps, the click of heeled boots against stone began to ring through, and that voice, that voice, began to sing once more.

‘You’ve run so long, you’ve run so far.’

He jumped to the nearest ledge, tore across the long pathway that lay before him, when he skidded to a halt as he realised that there was no other stairway or ledge at the end waiting for him. Stephen started to take a step back, when from the edge, floating upwards like a creature from a tomb who had been locked away for eternity, Mordo literally flipped himself up onto the pathway, blocking his path.

He slunk towards him, each step ringing louder and louder in Stephen’s ears. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t smiling at all.

He looked blank, tired, like he was staring defeat straight in the eye and had no way of stopping its devastation. Stephen stared back at him, mouth opening slightly. He couldn’t believe it. Mordo had only appeared to him an hour or so ago, waltzing him round the room with ease and fluid grace, a sharp smile tearing holes into Stephen’s anxious mind, twirling him around as though he would eat him up whole, purred and smirked and lazed, and glittered at him - Mordo had been in his element, the Goblin King who ruled the labyrinth with a silver fist.

But now - now he was almost shrunken. Like someone had put him in the wash and forgotten to straighten him out and iron him properly. That glittering ferocity and pride still remained, Stephen could see it, anyone who couldn’t was a fool to not be able to see it. But it had somehow been diminished, white-washed away.

He stopped a few steps away from Stephen.

‘Your eyes can be so cruel.’

He held up a crystal ball to Stephen’s eye level, blankly staring at him, chin titled down so that his eyes only just gazed over the top of the ball at him. Stephen straightened up, eyes darting between the ball and Mordo, squinting at his face, trying to see if any answer to Mordo’s behaviour lay in there, open as a page to him. But there was none. Only a tired looking fairy holding up a crystal ball.

And then, so quickly and so sharply Stephen couldn’t realise it, a glaring smirk burst onto Mordo’s face, ripping the exhaustion into pieces, and eyes glittering, he drew the ball back, opened his mouth to sing, and sharp, pointed teeth exposed themselves to the vulnerable flesh of his lips.

‘Just as I can be so cruel.’

He turned and with one swift movement, threw the ball. It fell towards a set of stairs, and Stephen flinched away at the sound of smashing crystal against stone.

‘Though I do believe in you.’ 

Only, there was none. To his amazement, the ball began to bounce neatly up the stairs, one step at a time, with a sweet, tinkling sound, like that of a rattle, bouncing up and up, until it reached the top of the stairs, and at the top was -

‘Christine!’ 

Stephen’s voice echoed throughout the chamber in desperation and amazed hope for the first time since he’d set foot in the labyrinth. His whole journey lay, spanned out before him, the bog, the ballroom, the forest, the castle; all for Christine. All for the little baby that sat, happy and contented, playing with the crystal ball within her chubby hands.

His voice, so much higher than Mordo’s, broke the spell that had enraptured him - who cared about some weird fairy who wore riding boots in some Esher painting and who cared about what he meant about the stars? He’d found his sister.

They could go home.

It was almost as though Mordo wasn’t there. He ran down the stairs, not knowing, not caring if the Goblin King chased behind him, tore across the paths, eyes never leaving the sight of Christine’s red and white striped pyjamas, never taking his gaze away from her.

‘Yes, I do.’

But he couldn’t reach her - he couldn’t get to her. The hope that had bubbled inside him had flared and faded as quickly as it had come. No matter how fast he ran, no matter how close the staircase he took to her, he couldn’t reach her. Stephen chased up one staircase only to discover that Christine had gone down a floor. He passed through a door only to see Christine toddling across a pathway. He ran through the paths, only to see her, slowly crawling to a doorway.

He couldn’t reach her.

And then Mordo began to sing again. But it didn’t sound like singing. It didn’t sound like singing at all.

‘Live without your sunlight.’

It sounded distant, too high-pitched, as though he was far, far away from Stephen, and had to sing higher to make him hear him. It sounded - it - 

It sounded almost human.

Stephen tried to push it off, this unease, this shaky feeling of anxiety that pooled and gurgled deep inside his stomach with a hollowing dread, focused on Christine. Christine was why he was here. Christine was why he had come to the labyrinth. He only cared about her.

Not some stupid fairy with glittering eyes and sea-like hair.

But Mordo’s voice came again -

‘Love without your heartbeat.’

Christine was on a pathway just before him. He jumped up. She was gone.

Mordo, standing before him, silhouetted in the window, the wind entwining glitter and rain through his hair, his cloak whirling behind him, curling around his legs.

Mordo, unveiling himself from the shadows of the mine, rising up from the floor to his full, true form.

Mordo, standing on the staircase, one step closer towards him, one step closer to reaching out and holding his hand.

Mordo, standing at the edge of the world, eyes dark with exhaustion and heartbreak, flipping over into shadows, hair trailing behind him. 

Mordo, moving the stars.

Mordo.

Mordo

Mordo.

And the voice came again, and he stopped, listened to it, listened with every fibre of his being -

‘I -‘

The Goblin King, blowing crystal balls out of his window towards him and his friend. 

The Goblin King, regal and beautiful in his velvet coat.

The Goblin King, come to give him a gift, any gift, anything he ever wanted.

The Goblin King, who made him feel as though he was the only being who ever existed, who ever breathed, who ever mattered.

The Goblin King, his eyes shining with unshed tears, looming above a stone ledge, moving the stars for nobody but a strange, lonely teenager.

The Goblin King, silhouetted in a doorway, watching a teenager run around, as though he had never seen anything more beautiful than that boy.

The Goblin King, his voice breaking as he sang.

‘I can’t live within you.’

Stephen slowly looked up. Mordo stood on a ledge, crouched down to the floor, almost kneeling, watching Stephen with soft, smudged eyes and a mouth down-turned with tears.

The Goblin King, who had moved the stars, just for him.

Nobody moved the stars for just anyone. 

Stephen didn’t know what to think. Stephen didn’t know what to believe. He had spent too long in this labyrinth.

He wanted to go home.

With a strength he didn’t know he had, Stephen tore his gaze away from Mordo and looked down, over the ledge he stood on.

Below him was Christine, looking up at him with huge blue eyes. Stephen didn’t even have to look back to know Mordo was still looking at him.

Had he planned this the whole time? Was this a game to him? Keep some kid trapped in your own personal maze, and now, when he finally had the ticket out, cry crocodile tears to make him stay? Stephen doubted Mordo wanted Christine that badly. People wouldn’t go this far just for a baby.

The ballroom - the way Mordo had toyed with him, told him how much fun he was having, the way he looked at Stephen like he wanted to eat him whole - that Mordo was nothing like the Mordo that knelt above him, the one who had sung to him about the stars. Was he Mordo? Or was he the Goblin King?

Or was he both? 

Who was he? What was he trying to do? What was he trying to be? 

What did this mean? What did this all mean?

But he knew. Stephen knew exactly what this all meant. Or at least part of it.

Just because he knew what Mordo was trying to do didn’t mean he wanted to acknowledge it or be part of it.

Stephen wasn’t some sort of damsel that Mordo could seduce and bat his eyelids at, and swoop around a ballroom in the vain hope of seduction. Stephen was going home.

And to do that there appeared to be only one way out.

Stephen took a breath, took another, squeezed his eyes tight, let out a breath that sounded like a gasp, and with every ounce of brevity he had, he jumped - throwing himself off the top of the ledge.

The stones raced past him, the doorways growing into whirlpools, the floor moving and flowing away from him as he fell towards him, breaking down into deep, dark purple, chunks of bricks floating past his head, stars beginning to emerge in the gaps of the darkness that began to grow before him.

Stephen fell on and on, watching the world break apart around him, watching as the labyrinth tore away from him.

In the silence that followed him as he fell down, Stephen could have sworn he heard the sound of a gasp, thick and heartbroken from above him.

**Author's Note:**

> So at least three people wrote on my last Labyrinth fic that I should continue it, and who am I to not listen to my audience? :D Plus I got to re-watch Labyrinth again so I'm pretty pleased about that!  
> Also, thank you to everyone who read or left kudos on As the World Falls Down and all my other Doctor Strange fics. You guys are great and you really help encourage me to write more for this ship and this fandom.  
> I have a tumblr! Come and check me out at turn-and-face-the-paige


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